I decided that I needed a place to track the things that I am doing related to wilderness activities. This includes my efforts in bushcraft primarily, but may venture into the realms of disc golf, geocaching, and general survival/TEOTWAWKI type projects and thinking as well. It's something that I have thought about for quite a while and done various 'mini' projects and activities, but a place where I can document/share my successes and struggles makes sense to me. I had this old blogger account from back in the earlier days when I did this blog, and decided to make a new one here. I also will use this site to post my BushClass USA Student practice information, which I will link to from the BushCraftUSA forums.
I've always been interested in knives. From the crazy looking Bat'leth's in Star Trek to the more standard $3 throwaway Victorinox knock offs that you find at every gas station/flea market in existence, I've liked looking at and having knives around. Unfortunately, until recently that liking of knives has not translated into a knowledge of good knives, how to sharpen a knife or even the most effective way to use knives. I was in Cub Scouts for a while as a kid, however, I never did follow through to Boy Scouts and while I feel like I can start a fire fairly well. I can do it given multiple matches or a lighter and plenty of newspaper and my choice of kindling from a large pile.
As I started to look into general "Survival" type information, I was immediately overwhelmed by the fact that I really didn't have a good fixed blade knife that I could use for... well... anything. We did have our nice kitchen knives that my wife Dusty and I got for our wedding, but I think if I tried to make a feather stick using her Zwilling J.A. Henckel Santoku knife, she'd use it on me first.
This led me to decide that I needed a knife, a real knife. One that I could beat the tar out of and love and use. It didn't have to look pretty, but it had to work. So armed with that desire and not much information, I decided to go get a knife. Now, I should add that I had at the same time period during some late night youtubery, discovered iawoodsman. And I have been and still am watching and reading about a lot of people's adventures in making their PSKs. (The making of my 1st edition PSK is on my short list of winter projects) So I've been looking at a lot of MORA blades online, and I've been looking at several knives at the stores that I've happened across that have knives. I ended up buying this knife.
This is the Buck PakLite Caper made of 420HC Stainless Steel, which sounds really cool and I don't know what that means... yet. I've tried making a few feather sticks/shavings with it. I also used it to baton the one piece of firewood that I had my Rubbermaid tote that was small enough to fit the blade across. I met with some success, and much failure. I had never used a baton style approach to splitting wood before, and while it was a little frustrating, I did start to get the hang of it. When it came to making the shavings, well I thought I had done a good job, but I couldn't get them to light. I was getting some decent curls, but they wouldn't take a spark from the Swedish Firesteel I bought on Amazon. Oh yeah, I should mention that I was using aged and dried Cherry wood.
I did find out that Cherry wood is a hardwood and was probably not the best place to start, particularly with a knife with no handle. I did acquire some paracord and I think that a paracord handle should be a THIS WEEKEND! project. Side note, I did finally start my first fire from Firesteel. I have used two man-made tinders so far to successfully catch sparks, cotton balls and dryer lint. I'd really like to get some wood shavings to catch a spark, but baby steps right?
One of my challenges with knives, even crappy knives and kitchen knives, is that I have never really learned how to properly sharpen a knife. I've spent a little bit of time with a couple methods trying to sharpen my caping knife, with mixed success. I am going to spend some time doing research on knife sharpening, and that will probably be the topic of my next blog post. If that actually occurs. I have heard that MORA blades with the Scandinavian grind are easier to sharpen and with as inexpensive as they are and as much as everyone raves about them on the BushCraftUSA forums, I should probably just get one.
Short List:
- Paracord Handle for caping knife, and paracord lanyard for firesteel
- Learn how to sharpen a knife
- Get a MORA blade
- Start working on BushClass lessons, good winter lessons for a city dweller might be PSK/FAK
- Get better at getting man made tinder to spark w/ firesteel
